Get Wisdom! (Proverbs 4:1-27)
Sermon Notes PDF | WORD FULL LIVESTREAM
I think I was giving so many hugs this morning that my mic got switched. But anyway, it's so good to be here. This has been such an awesome weekend. We had a great time at camp. And it's just, it's been gas in our tank. I'll tell you, it was eight years ago, I think maybe even to this very Sunday, that we drove and we left. And when we left, I mean, I remember it well. It seems like yesterday, really, the tears in that car ride. And now it's just incredible to come back and to be here with all of you.
In some ways, you know, eight years ago seems like just yesterday. You know what I mean? It doesn't seem like that long ago. And even just the ministry season that you're in right now, just, you know, getting ready for Kidstown Camp and Fusion right around the corner and kind of wrapping up the semester of life groups and all that kind of stuff. It seems like just yesterday could run right back into it. But time keeps marching on, doesn't it?
And I look at my kids, and when we left, Emma was just a little girl. And now she's a young woman, just finished her first year of college away from home, Cedarville University in Ohio. Bree, she was real small, now 16, almost 17. She got her job and just excited for Kids Town Camp back at our church. And Pierce, he's 12 now. So, you know, the conversations that Steph and I are having, they're just different, right? It changes.
And it's not just our family, though. You look around the world and you think about what's changed in the last eight years. It's been a lot, hasn't it? I mean, in some ways, it's like we've walked into a whole different world. I mean, eight years ago, we would not have said the word COVID. We wouldn't have known what that was, right? And then after COVID, what's happened? We got remote work, we got hybrid work, we got telemedicine, we got all this, you know, it's all kind of spiraled from that. Electric vehicles, they were more a niche thing, and now they're pretty popular. Social media, Facebook was dominant, and now it's been replaced mostly by Instagram, TikTok, things like this. And perhaps the biggest change of all, when you think about the last eight years, maybe it's been AI and the advancement of AI and what's going on with artificial intelligence.
A guy at my church, I know you've seen videos like this too. A guy at my church, he came up to me, he's been in a wheelchair for a little bit now, and he said, Steve, I want you to see this video. And I looked at the video, and it's him, and he's getting out of his wheelchair, and he pushes his wheelchair aside, and then he dances a little bit. I said, Larry, that's incredible. I mean, that's so cool. You must be doing so much better. And he smiles and laughs and said, Steve, it's not real. It's like my son took a photo, and from that photo, he used AI to make this happen, this video.
I like Joel Rosenberg books. I don't know if you're familiar with Joel Rosenberg. He writes like in-time apocalyptic Middle East thrillers and things. I mean, they were just real page turners, right? So I finished the last one in the series, and I go to AI, and I just type in, hey, can you write me a book that's an in-time apocalyptic thriller, kind of like Joel Rosenberg, make it a real page turner? In less than a minute, it spits out a 56-chapter book. I read the first six chapters, and I'm telling you, it's just about as good as Joel Rosenberg. I was like, this is incredible.
Elon Musk said this. He said, we have for the first time the situation where we have something that is going to be far smarter than the smartest human. He also said this, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. And he's the leading innovator of this technology. More importantly, do you know what Jesus said in John's Gospel? Jesus said this, that in the last days, there's going to be false prophets who do signs and wonders so incredible, so miraculous, that if possible, they would deceive even the elect. That's not so hard to imagine, is it? I mean, when you look around the world and these deep fakes and all this kind of stuff and what can be replicated, it's not so hard to believe. But listen, you know what he said? If possible. If possible. You know what that assumes? It's not possible.
One approach to looking at the world that we are heading into, and if you look at all the change in the last eight years, I mean, can you just imagine the changes in the eight years to come? One approach to look at it is to look at it kind of like Elon Musk and say, man, this is like terrifying. This is dangerous stuff. That's one aspect of it. Can I tell you that's not the attitude of the church? Do you know what the attitude of the church is? Praise God that God has handpicked this generation, you and me, to be his witnesses, his mouthpiece, his ambassadors for this cultural moment. That we would be the ones to speak the truth lovingly, boldly, convincingly, and live it for this generation to see. That's what he's called you and me to. You know, it's been said that at this time that we need to be, the church needs to have the wisdom of Solomon, right? It's kind of true, but really it's the wisdom of the Lord that Solomon had. And that's what I want to look at with you this morning.
We're going to be headed to Proverbs chapter 4. But before we get there, you have to understand that sometimes Proverbs is misunderstood. Sometimes people think of Proverbs as this book of all this wisdom and you just kind of go to it and you can kind of cherry pick it out and like, okay, let me use this wisdom and let me kind of find some other wisdom. Let me use this little tidbit, this little sound bite that he says. That's not the way Proverbs is intended to be.
In the introduction of the book, there's this summary statement right in the introduction that lets us know that there's actually a combination lock on the book of Proverbs. And that if you don't unlock that lock, you don't have access to any of it. So before we get to Proverbs 4, we've got to start, we've got to look at Proverbs 1:7. Because you have to unlock, really, the lock that's on the book. Proverbs 1:7 says this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now several times in the book he'll say this, he'll make this statement, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In this case he says knowledge. He uses knowledge and wisdom parallel in this verse.
To understand the book of Proverbs, to gain access to the wisdom of the book of Proverbs, there's several terms that you really have to unlock in order to understand what the book of Proverbs is all about, to really gain access to the wisdom. I want to break it down for you. I want to look at three terms specifically or phrases: the fear of the Lord, the beginning, and wisdom. Fear of the Lord, beginning, and wisdom.
So let's go ahead and look at the first one, wisdom, first. We'll begin, we'll spin the dial on wisdom on this combination lock. And wisdom is difficult for us. We often think of wisdom as knowledge that is practically applied. That's a hint of it, but it really misses the full context of what biblical wisdom truly is. You've got to dig a little deeper. The Hebrew term for wisdom is this term, chokmah. As I understood, as I've studied, this term chokmah is very important to the Hebrew people. It's almost like their eyes would light up when they hear this because they understand how critical and how important chokmah is just to life and to living.
Now, arguably the foremost expert in our day on the book of Proverbs is a man named Bruce Waltke. He's 95 years old. He's still with us. He actually lives in the state of Washington. I had lunch with him about 10 years ago. He's a very humble, very kind man. We kind of traded stories about Dallas Theological Seminary, and mostly I just sat and listened just to his wisdom. But he wrote a two-volume set on the book of Proverbs. It's very scholarly. It's very academic. It's one of those books that I have to read like everything he writes about three times in order to understand what he's saying sometimes. But he makes this statement. He spends a lot of ink on this term chokmah. Here's part of what he says. Chokmah is difficult to define because it is a totalizing concept that seeks to bring all of life's activities into harmony with God's created order. That's a pretty good starting place, okay? All of life's activities in harmony with God's created order. This is getting at wisdom.
He also goes on to say this. At its core is the belief that God has made the world in, with, and by wisdom. The wise, therefore, seeks to orient all of life to conform to this wisdom. If I step out of the poetic language here just for a little bit of Proverbs and we just get and just think and just rehearse what we know about God, I think it helps make everything that Bruce Waltke is arguing kind of come together for us. We know that in the beginning God created the world and that he creates humanity to steward over his creation. And he says this is very good. In humanity, as we are designed to steward over his creation, it's to bring about God's flourishing. That we would be his image bearers and we would steward in line with the way God would have his world stewarded. How he would have it, how it would work. And this is very good. This leads to flourishing. Discovering and living out God's created order leads to flourishing in God's created universe. It leads to flourishing in the lives of the people that we interact with, the flourishing of the lives even of our own lives and our families, people around us.
Wisdom is the art of living life in concert with the way God designed life to be lived. That's what true biblical wisdom really is, the art of living life in concert with the way God designed life to be lived. Let's move on to the next dial of our combination lock. I'm taking these in reverse order. The next term is beginning. Sometimes we misunderstand this one, too, because when we think of beginning, sometimes we think of a starting place, right? Well, let me start here. This is the beginning, and then I move on. I've kind of graduated from that. I don't need that anymore because now I'm at advanced things. Now I'm at this. That's not what he's getting at. Beginning in this terminology, it's like this foundation place. It's like a spring that bubbles forth and then travels throughout the whole river.
I grew up in Florida. And they got a lot of springs there. My family, we had a favorite springs that we would go to close to our house called Blue Springs. And when you go there, it's beautiful. I love taking my kids there even this day when we go to visit my mom. And we look and you go and you see this spring. And one of the things we like to do is like dive down to the source of it as deep as we can. You know what I mean? Like how long can we hold our breath? And we get to varying depths. And inevitably, I think every time I've ever been there, there's always scuba divers there. And they have all their gear on and everything like this. And then they dive. And they dive so deep down into the source of this spring that as you're watching them with our masks on, you know what happens? They just disappear. They're out of sight. They go so deep. But it's down into the source of it. But that source, what happens? It flows through the whole thing. It's present throughout the whole river. That's the idea.
Beginning, it's the foundation, it's the source, it's the fundamental principle of all of it. It's not something you ever graduate from. Bruce Waltke is really helpful here as well. Here's what he writes. What the alphabet is to reading, what the notes are to music, what the numerals are to math, is what the fear of the Lord is to gaining wisdom. You hear what he's saying? It's like, I've learned the alphabet. I've learned the ABCs. And no one would say, well, now that I've learned those, I'll just kind of set those aside because I want to read. No. You still have to know the letters, right? You still need the alphabet in order to read. Nobody says, well, you know, I've learned how to count. I know numbers. But I've kind of graduated from that now. I'm moving on to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. No. You still need numbers in order to do math. That's the idea. It's the source. It flows through it all.
Now let's spin the dial on the last one, the fear of the Lord. I hope you're beginning to see, okay, well, what is this? I need to understand this. This phrase, the fear of the Lord, it occurs 15 times in the book of Proverbs, and it occurs way more in the rest of Scripture. It's one of the most important concepts, really, in the entire Bible. And like wisdom and beginning, it can be difficult just to understand just on the face of it. Because sometimes when you hear something like fear of the Lord, fear of something, when you fear something, you kind of, well, maybe I should be afraid. I should cower away. I should kind of hide behind. Perhaps God's going to use lightning bolts. He's going to strike down something like this. I should be afraid. I should shrink back. In many ways, that's the exact opposite of what the fear of the Lord is.
I'm going to step away from that statement for a moment, and I'm going to step right back into it. Let me step away from it just to say this. We recognize that God is holy, that he is powerful, that he is mighty. He's the God of the galaxies, the creator of everything. He is other. And with that, there's this just healthy respect, a healthy fear for who he is and what he's done. Now let me step right back into it. Throughout scripture, men and women who fear the Lord never shrink back away from God. What do they do? They run towards him to be sheltered in his presence, to be provisioned by him. You want that relational closeness, that intimacy.
In ancient times, the question was not whether or not you believed in God. The question was, which God or gods did you believe in? And someone who believed in the one true God, someone who believed in Yahweh. Gentiles later who believed, what were they called? God-fearers. This is what the fear of the Lord is. It's to submit to him in worship. It's how we relate. Submission, it requires trust. It requires obedience. It requires faithfulness. This is what it is. The fear of the Lord is this relational posture of worship and submission.
So I can put together just this combination lock and help you understand, because if you don't get this, the wisdom of Proverbs is inaccessible to you. Here's the key to it. You must live life oriented toward God in worship and submission. If you don't do that, the wisdom of this book is inaccessible. It's life lived oriented toward God in worship and submission. This is not merely like an introduction to the book of Proverbs. It is the prerequisite to the Proverbs. It is the combination lock that opens the vault that gives access to all this wisdom. But your life must be rightly oriented toward him in worship and submission.
Here's what I'm arguing. You can read the words. You can memorize the sayings. You can quote the principles. But if your heart is not rightly bowed before God, the wisdom of the Proverbs will be inaccessible to you because biblical wisdom is not simply about intelligence. It's about orientation. It's living in God's world under God's rule according to God's design.
So we're headed to Proverbs 4. And we're headed to Proverbs 4 because Proverbs 4 really helps unpack what living wisdom, just what it looks like. You see this often in the first nine chapters of Proverbs where Solomon, he's giving these lectures to his sons. And you'll feel it, I hope, this morning. Just this angst that his sons get what he's saying. It's like I'm pleading with you. I'm just desperate that you would understand what I'm trying to get into you. Because he knows how important this is. You'll feel the passion. You'll see it just in the repetition of his words. The chapter unfolds in three stanzas. We're going to take them just one stanza at a time.
Let's begin. Proverbs 4, 1 through 9. Solomon writes, Hear, O sons, a father's instruction, and be attentive that you may gain insight. For I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast my words. Keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom, get insight. Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her and she will keep you. Love her and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. And whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown.
Do you see how relational wisdom is? Do you feel it, just the way that Solomon, he's talking to his kids there at the beginning, and it's just the father, it's speaking to his sons just desperately. It's one generation impacting the next generation. And then lady wisdom shows up, does she not? And he personifies wisdom as the lady who just comes and guards you and keeps you, blesses you and crowns you.
It's relational, and this matters because we live in an age that is flooded with information, but it is starving for wisdom. I would argue never in human history have we had more access to content. You've got podcasts, books, videos, articles, social media. I mean, there's so much vying for your attention. But access to information is not the same thing as access to wisdom. Here's the big idea of the stanza. Listen to wisdom because wisdom is relational before it is informational. Wisdom is relational before it is informational.
Look at how Solomon, he's just wanting the attention of his sons. He uses words like, hear, be attentive, hold fast to my words. He's inviting his sons to take this posture of humility. It's like, come close, listen in. You get this picture, right? He wants the full and undivided attention. When my girls were young, I used to say things like, give me your eyes. Give me your eyes. Because I knew if I had their eyes, I had all of them. You know what I mean? Like, then they're paying attention. Then I've got them. Okay, now you're listening. Now I can get into you what I want to get into you because now I've got you. Full and undivided. This is what Solomon said. I just want your attention. Listen up. Give me your eyes. Give me your eyes. He wants to make sure that what he has to say is taken to heart, that it's absorbed. He wants it to get in them. He wants this to shape every moment of their life. This is not some passive hearing. He wants it to actively shape everything about them. This is humble listening.
And listen, we have a problem with listening, don't we? I mean, most of us, we tend to listen so that we can reply. We tend to listen and then we can get defensive about what's being said. We do selective listening. The idea here is that you just humbly listen to learn because wisdom begins when humility begins. You can't assume that you already know everything. The Proverbs, it continually contrasts the wise person and the fool. You see this contrast over and over again. The fool rejects correction. The wise person welcomes it. The fool resists instruction. The wise person leans into it. The fool says, I'll figure things out for myself. The wise person says, teach me. If Proverbs 1:7 is the lock on the door, understand this, humility is the posture that turns the key. Because part of what the fear of the Lord says is, God, you know better than me. You know all things. My knowledge is just a fraction. I know next to nothing, but you know it all, so I submit to you. Teach me your ways, oh God. We will never truly receive wisdom unless our lives are oriented toward him.
So how do we listen to wisdom? Here's the first step. You receive instruction humbly. Look at verse 3. This is beautiful. Solomon writes, when I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother. What he's about to say is, what I'm giving to you was first given to me. I didn't come up with this all on my own. Wisdom travels through faithful relationships. You understand? I mean, this is why the church matters. This is why gathering together like this, this is why it matters. This is why Christian parenting around the table, it's why it matters. Why discipleship and being involved with others, life groups, things like this, it's why it matters.
I've got a friend of mine, it's tragic. He was at seminary with me at DTS. He's really kind of fallen away. He posts online frequently now about how AI is his counselor. How he puts in these prompts and then AI kind of tells him, like, here's what I should do and here's how I should think and this kind of thing. Listen, you don't need a chat box to tell you who you are. You need to know who God is, what God has done, and then he will tell you who you are and what you're to do.
You need godly people in your life. You need godly friends. You need that godly man who shows you this is what it looks like to be a godly husband. This is what it looks like to be a godly parent. This is what it looks like to be a godly friend. You need that godly woman in your life who comes alongside you and says this is what it looks like to be a godly wife, a godly mom, a godly friend. You need godly friends who lift you up, who build into you, who will call you out when your thinking is off, when your thinking is wrong, who love you enough to say the hard things. You need that. Wisdom is not just downloaded into you. It's not just, well, let me just put it in. Don't we all know plenty of really intelligent people who do really dumb things? We need it embodied. We need to watch people living the Christian life and be in relationship with them. The Christian life is not meant to be downloaded. It's meant to be lived out in community. That's why once you get to the New Testament, what do you find? You find all these one anothers. Because it's community. It's relationship.
You can listen to sermons all day long, every day, and you can still avoid accountability. You can read theology books all day long, every day, and you can still resist discipleship. Listen, wisdom grows best in relationships, not in study halls. Now, we don't neglect this. This is important. This is vital, absolutely. But you need people in your life who love you, who model for you, and you need to be that person in other people's life that you love them and you're modeling for them. This is the Christian life. This is what it looks like.
The fool turns away from it all. They seek counselors that just affirm what they're already thinking. That's foolishness, right? Wisdom seeks people who will be honest with them, tell them the truth, the hard things. Now, there's something else about this scene that's really important that I don't want you to miss. There's this section here in Proverbs 4 that you almost feel as if you're stepping into Solomon's boyhood home, don't you? Like, I'm learning, I'm hearing this from my father. What was passed down to me, I'm passing down to you. And you can almost picture the scene. David a little older now, the battle's behind him. Perhaps the sword hanging on the wall. The king who once stood before giants now sitting at a table beside his son, talking to him, counseling him, pouring into him. Solomon there listening, not in a throne room, not on a battlefield, but just the quiet moments of life, absorbing this instruction from his father.
It's not just David there, though. There's Bathsheba too, isn't there? What did he say? I was tender, the only one in the sight of my mother. You can picture that, can't you? Just this mom who looks at Solomon, oh, he's the apple of my eye, the only one. I love him. And Solomon felt that, that just tenderness of a mother's love. He knew it. Now, it's interesting because when we say David and Bathsheba, what comes to mind? Yeah, sin, the affair, the murder, the scandal, the ugliness. And rightly so in some ways. It's one of the Bible's story most clearest reminders that sin devastates lives. But understand this, that's not the whole story. That's not the whole story of their life. Because here's Solomon saying, I heard from my father. I was listening to him. He was speaking to me. I knew my mother's love. She was there for me. I knew how special I was to her.
Who in your life asks you those hard questions? Who in your life, do you just know their love? David had failed horribly. Bathsheba, she had suffered deeply. I mean, they carried these family scars. And yet here's Solomon saying, I remember my dad sitting next to me and saying, give me your eyes. I want your full and undivided attention. I want to make sure that what I'm sharing to you gets into you. It's this important. Don't forget. Don't miss this. Listen carefully, son. Don't waste your life the way I almost wasted mine. Learn from the pain that I created. Walk wisely where I once walked foolishly. You can imagine these conversations. Bathsheba there too. Just loving him. Hugging him. Knowing the love of his mother.
It's not merely a lecture about wisdom, is it? It's relationship. It's wisdom handed down through tears and laughter, joys and sorrows, just the struggles of life. Solomon knew it. He knew what he received from his parents. And this is important to us because sometimes we think, I don't know if I have anything to offer. I know my past. I know what I've done. Who would want to listen to me? You have something to say. If God has redeemed you and restored you, he wants to use you. He's got a message to speak through you.
To your kids. Maybe you grew up and you had a mom and dad like that who sat you down at the dinner table. You knew the love of your mom. You can remember even your father's words. If you just close your eyes, you hear his voice. What he said to you. What he poured into you. How special it was. You take that. Don't let it end with you. You pour it into your kids. Maybe you say, I don't have kids. You find spiritual kids. You disciple someone. You bring them around the table and you pour into them. You love them. Maybe you say, Steve, I didn't have that. I wish I had a mother's love, but my mom wasn't that way. I wish I had good fatherly wisdom, but, you know, my dad basically left us. Listen, you start a new legacy in your family. You do something different. You be the one who takes the words of Scripture and you implant it into the next generation.
Here's the idea. How do we listen to wisdom? You learn from faithful examples. Perfect? No. Faithful. We see how important this is. Look at this repeated command in Proverbs 4:7. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. And whatever you get, get insight. Solomon is saying, whatever else you pursue in life, pursue wisdom above all of it. I mean, don't misunderstand this verse. Solomon, he's not saying like wisdom is valuable amongst many valuable things. No, no, he's saying wisdom is worth rearranging your life for. Why? Because it's a reorientation of life. It's worth everything. It calls to mind, really, Jesus when he tells the parable of the pearl of great price. Matthew 13:45 and 46, he said, the merchant sees something so valuable, so priceless, that he sells everything he has just to acquire this one pearl of great value because he knows how valuable it is.
You understand right here in this text, Solomon is saying, here's what this great pearl is. It's wisdom. What is wisdom? It's a life rightly oriented toward God in worship and submission. And it's worth everything. It's worth everything. It's that valuable. The merchant, I mean, you look at how he sells all his stuff. People around him might look at him and say, you're crazy. You're giving up everything for that? Like, what are you thinking? This is how you're orienting your life? This is what you're after? Listen, the merchant, he didn't sell his stuff, like, sadly. He wasn't like, oh, man, I know I'm getting a raw deal here, but, you know, I feel like I ought to go ahead with it. He didn't sell it dutifully. Like, well, I just want to do the right thing. I just want to be obedient. I'm just going to do it. No. No. He sold it gladly. There's joy. There's excitement because he knows this is worth everything. This is life, a life oriented toward God in worship and submission.
Here's the idea. You pursue wisdom as your greatest treasure. Pursue wisdom as your greatest treasure. Let's move to the second stanza. Proverbs 4:12 through 19. Hear, my son, and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom. I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered. And if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not go on it. Turn away from it and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble.
In this stanza, Solomon, he shifts his imagery. Now wisdom is not mainly pictured as this instruction to hear. It's now pictured as a path to walk. All right, verse 11, I have taught you the way of wisdom. I have led you in the paths of uprightness. The emphasis here is directional. Here's the big idea of this stanza, live wisdom. But understand this, wisdom is orientational before it is behavioral. Wisdom is orientational before it is behavioral. Before the Proverbs asks, what are you doing? The Proverbs are asking the question, where are you going? Our culture, we tend to think in terms of isolated decisions. Like, God, give me wisdom in this area, give me wisdom in this area, give me wisdom in this area. And so we come to, like, I need wisdom here, here, here. Proverbs doesn't think so much like that. It thinks in terms of trajectory. Like, where are you headed? Where are you oriented? What are you after? So he keeps using path language. Way, path, walk, stumble, walk. Because your life is moving somewhere. Every relationship you have is taking you somewhere. Every habit you have is taking you somewhere. Every compromise you're making is taking you somewhere. Everything about your life is taking you somewhere. And nobody just drifts into godliness. You can drift into foolishness, but you don't just drift into godliness.
Verse 13 says this, keep hold of instruction, do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life. Do you understand this? Wisdom is not occasional advice. Wisdom is not some nugget that you hold on to. Wisdom is a path that you remain on. In the Christian life, it's not mainly about dramatic moments. It's about those daily choices, those daily habits. It's your time in the Word. It's why it matters. It's gathering together like this. It's why it matters. It's your prayer life. It's why it matters. Discipleship. It's why it matters. It's those daily intentionalities. It's why it all matters. And over time, habits shape a life.
When I first got to our church eight years ago, Watermark Bible Church, it wasn't even called Watermark Bible Church back then. But it was unhealthy. It was rough. It had not been led well. The word had not been preached well. And you know what I would have really liked? I would have really liked to show up and preach like one just like grand slam sermon, right? Just like if I could just do like my best sermon ever and just get everybody out there just, okay, now I'm committed to the word. I want to just grow in the word like deeply, richly planted and just rooted in the word. If I could give one sermon that was like that and just change everything, I mean, that would have been awesome. It didn't work like that. And it rarely does, does it? It's over time. But you know what? Through the faithful preaching of God's word, over time, churches change. People change.
Never take for granted the fact that you're a part of a church that faithfully preaches God's word week in and week out. Because that's what changes lives. It's rarely that just one message, oh, now my life is changing. No, no, no. It's the daily consistent diet of the word that changes a life.
Solomon he compares the righteousness, the righteous life, to a sunrise. Think about that for a moment. It's one of the most beautiful verses to me in this section. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. You know, at first light, darkness still lingers, doesn't it? You can still see the shadows. Everything isn't perfectly bright just yet. Right? You can see the beauty of the colors, but you can't see everything just clearly. This is what he's saying. That the righteous, you don't just come to faith and then boom, noonday, I see everything clearly now. I know exactly how to be a Christian. I can walk just in lockstep. No, no, no, it's not like that. It's this growth over time. The light has dawned, but I'm not at noonday yet. I'm just growing.
And you go through seasons of life sometimes and maybe the growth is slow. Maybe you don't even notice it in yourself. And then someone comes alongside because you're living in community and they say something to you. They say, you know what? I noticed this about you. You wouldn't have responded this way a year ago. There's this depth, this insight that you have. I don't know if you've said that. I see some growth in you. You're different now. And it's almost, oh, I am. God is using me. He is growing me. I am maturing. Sometimes we won't even see it in ourselves, but other people come along and they let us know. But that's what the Christian life is. It's this trajectory toward life. Because in this life, I mean, sometimes we still see things hazy, right, like through a mirror dimly. Sometimes it's like a funhouse mirror. Like I can't make sense of all this. But one day we will arrive at noonday when everything is clear. That will be glory. And now it will all make sense. So how do we live wisdom? You stay on the path of life.
Now, in contrast, Solomon then says, don't enter the path of the wicked. Avoid it. Don't go on it. Turn away from it. Pass on. I mean, you notice the escalation. You see this comparison, this contrast, this active avoidance. There's an urgency in his tone. Like, don't let it go this way. Why? Because sin is deceptive. It's so deceptive. It lies to you. And it does it over a period of time, too. Listen, no one just wakes up one morning and says, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to tank my marriage. Nobody wakes up and says that. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, you know what I feel like doing today? I think I'm just going to destroy my family. Nobody does that. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, I'm just going to turn away from God. I'm going to abandon him. I think I'm done. Nobody wakes up one day and just says those things.
It's a trajectory. It's choices. It's this path. It's this direction that you're on. Let me show it to you like this. I've got these two dowel rods, and when Luke saw them, he said I should do a rise of my love up here. I think Steph would cringe if I tried to do that, but if you look at these and you just imagine this is the line, this is the slope, and if it's angled this way, someone in first service helped me out and they said that the equation of slope is y equals mx plus b. If you plug in that equation and you're looking at this, you know where the line's eventually gonna go, right? You can mathematically calculate it out. Okay, it's on this slope. It's going this way. This is where it's gonna lead. This is where it's gonna end up. This is where it's gonna be. You understand that.
If you imagine that this line's straight, this is the plumb line, this is Jesus, this is what we're after, a life oriented towards him in worship and submission, and you're right on. There's no daylight, right? You're going to the same place. But just imagine this. There's little choices. There's little compromises. There's little things that you do. And now you see daylight, right? Now you see daylight. And right here, maybe you're looking at it and you're saying, that's a little bit of daylight. You extend that on far enough and what happens? You're on like a different universe, right? It just expands wider and wider and wider. And sometimes that happens in our life. And what do we do? We wake up one day and we wonder, how did my life end up like this? How did I end up here? And we're looking way out here. You know what Proverbs is saying? There was this little daylight back here. There was little choices, little compromises, little things, and they were changing the trajectory of your life. And now you've ended up in a place you never imagined you'd ever be. It's orientational. Wisdom is orientational.
Here's the idea. Follow the path that leads to light. Follow the path that leads to light. I want to look at the final stanza with you. It gets intensely practical here. Check it out. Proverbs 4:20 through 27. My son, be attentive to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech. Put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward. Let your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil.
Solomon, he now moves from just broad direction to comprehensive application. And here's the big idea. Love wisdom because wisdom is universal before it is specific. It's universal before it is specific. Oftentimes, we think of life as compartmentalized spirituality. I have this compartment of my life, right? I have my work life, I have my family life, I have my spiritual life, my neighborhood life, my fun life, whatever the case may be, academic life. And we can think in terms of compartmentalization. God's not after a compartment. He's after all of you. All of life is spiritual. He speaks to every part of it, and he wants all of it. He doesn't want to be in a compartment. He wants all of you. That's the idea here.
It's fascinating. He says this. He says he provides healing to all their flesh. He's not preaching some simplistic, prosperity, false gospel message here. He's not saying that wise people never get sick. The idea is that wisdom brings wholeness to life. Where sin damages and sin fractures, wisdom restores. Foolish living, it creates destruction everywhere. And it touches every aspect of life. It destroys emotions, relationships, your physical life. It all works together. I mean, you know this. There's been studies on it. Bitterness affects the body. Anxiety affects the body. Sexual immorality affects the body. Gluttony affects the body. Unrestrained anger affects the body. And it's all foolishness. All of it. But wisdom, what does wisdom do? It leads toward flourishing. God designed human beings to live according to his wisdom, to be oriented toward him in worship and submission. And so when we walk in the way that God has designed his world to operate, it leads to that flourishing. It produces health. It produces life. There's a wholeness to it. There's a peace there.
And even more, there's something restorative about God's truth. The Word of God, it heals distorted thinking. It heals sinful affections. It heals destructive patterns. It heals spiritual blindness. Many people, we carry, all of us, we carry these wounds created by foolishness, don't we? Our own foolishness, the foolishness of others are close in our lives. We have this weight because relationships are broken. We feel the shame. We feel the weight of it. We feel the guilt. There's regret there, and it's just, oh. This is one of the beauties of the gospel. Jesus takes the weight away. He says, let me take it. Let me carry it for you. How does he do that? I can know all of you, every aspect of you, and love you perfectly, and redeem you, and restore you. You understand, Jesus, he's not merely wisdom incarnate. He is that, but he's more. If I can put it this way, he's the healer of fools. And he brings us back in a proper relationship. He restores what sin destroys.
When the word of God takes root in your heart, it begins producing healing that spreads to the whole person. This is why Solomon says, keep them within your heart. Because wisdom doesn't merely just flow from the mind, it transforms the whole person. Verse 23, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Now, as we're talking about heart, it's important to understand heart is not merely this organ beating inside your chest. It's not merely your emotions. It's the central core of who you are. It's your desires. It's your will. It's your ambition. It's your feelings, your emotions. It's all of that. God wants all of you. This is the idea. So it's universal. And then he starts getting specific because it all flows downstream from the heart.
Oftentimes we focus on behavior modification. God focuses on heart transformation because that heals the whole person. If your heart worships approval, your life will be ruled by people. If your heart worships comfort, you will avoid sacrifice. If your heart worships money, your life will neglect eternity. This is why Proverbs 1:7 matters so much. The fear of the Lord, it reorients the heart. It reorients us back toward God in worship and submission. Here's the idea. Guard your heart vigilantly. Guard your heart vigilantly.
Now look at verse 24. I'm going to speed through the end here, but it says this. Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. The idea is, yes, it's your heart, but it's also your mouth. It's what you say. Your words matter. Your words can be life-giving, they can be encouraging, or they can tear down and they can destroy. But what is God? He wants your mouth. He wants to use your mouth as a vessel in his hands to proclaim his goodness, to speak his truth. Jesus said this, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Your mouth reveals your heart. Fools will use it for sarcasm, gossip, lying, manipulation, harshness, constant negativity, complaining. That's not what the wise do. The wise use it to give life. Here's the idea, use your words wisely.
We move from the mouth to the eyes. Look at verse 25. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Your eyes, they represent your focus and your desires because what captures your attention will eventually shape your affection. So I want your eyes, right? Give me your eyes. This is the idea again. I want on the Lord Jesus Christ because we become what we constantly behold. Our culture, it monetizes distraction. It tries to take our eyes all different kinds of places, does it not? Here, look at this endless scrolling on social media. Look at this advertisement. Here's this entertainment. Here's this, here's that. If Satan cannot destroy your faith outright, he will simply distract you into ineffectiveness. Solomon says, fix your gaze. The author of Hebrews put it this way, fix your eyes on Christ. Jesus, he's the only true wise son. He's the perfectly obedient one. He walked faithful with the father's path. He never deviated, not once. How do you love wisdom? You focus your eyes faithfully.
We've seen the mouth and the eyes. Now look at the feet, verses 26 and 27. Ponder the path of your feet. Then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. You see, wisdom, it even reaches the feet. What is this? It means everyday conduct matters. Your routines matter. Your habits matter. Your patterns matter. All of life matters. We tend to overestimate like these big dramatic moments and we tend to underestimate daily direction. Proverbs refocuses us. No, no, no, it's the habits of life. Because daily compromises, they eventually shape character. Daily indulgence, they eventually shape desire. Daily neglect eventually hardens the heart. But you know what? Daily prayer softens the soul. Daily scripture renews the mind. Daily obedience strengthens faith. And this has been Solomon's point. Your direction becomes your destiny. Where you are oriented, that's where you're headed. So pay attention to where you walk. You saw earlier, fools stumble around in the darkness. They don't even know where they're at. But what does God say? Those who walk faithfully, their destination is sure. So direct your feet purposefully.
Do you see how comprehensive this section is? It's the heart. It's all of you. But it's your mouth. It's your eyes. It's your feet. He wants all of you. We live in interesting days. And things might get crazier the next eight years as they have these last eight years. Maybe things will move even faster. And the words of Jesus definitely ring true that in the last days, false prophets will do signs, wonders so incredible that if possible, they'd even deceive the elect. But God has chosen you, his people, for this time. To be his ambassadors. To be his mouthpiece. To carry the words of truth to this generation. You need the wisdom of the Lord to do this. So rightly orient your life toward him in worship and submission.
Explicitly Mentioned or Read:
Psalm 30:3-5 - Referenced in the opening prayer regarding God's favor and turning mourning into dancing
Psalm 30:11 - "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing"
John 3:16 - "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son"
1 Corinthians 15:22 - "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive"
Hebrews 4:15 - Regarding Jesus being tempted yet without sin
Hebrews 4:16 - "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace"
Proverbs 1:7 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge"
Proverbs 4:1-9 - Read and extensively discussed (first stanza)
Proverbs 4:10-19 - Read and discussed (second stanza)
Proverbs 4:20-27 - Read and discussed (third stanza)
Proverbs 4:18 - "The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn"
Proverbs 4:23 - "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life"
Matthew 13:45-46 - Parable of the pearl of great price
Alluded to or Thematically Referenced:
Genesis 1-3 - Creation account and Adam's fall (discussed in context of Jesus as the better Adam)
Matthew 24:24 (or Mark 13:22) - False prophets doing signs and wonders in the last days
Matthew 11:28 - "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden" (alluded to in context of Jesus taking our burdens)
1 Corinthians 13:12 - "Through a mirror dimly" (referenced regarding seeing things unclearly now)
Matthew 12:34 - "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks"
Hebrews 12:2 - "Fix your eyes on Christ" (paraphrased)
2 Samuel 11-12 - David and Bathsheba's story (discussed but not directly quoted)